


Gay Chicken in Vermont

by Clockwork



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Absolute AU, Canon Divergent, Gay Chicken, Hallmark Movie, Love Lost - Freeform, M/M, Romance, got a kid, prompted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22353955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clockwork/pseuds/Clockwork
Summary: Alex goes to Vermont to find out how the hell Michael ended up with his childhood nemesis.Based on this prompt:
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Kyle Valenti
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Gay Chicken in Vermont

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AndreaLyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaLyn/gifts).



“What the hell is all of this?”

Alex’s tones are so incredulous they’ve gone up an octave and the way he’s flailing and gesturing at the room around them, Michael’s kind of worried he’s going to end up knocking something over. Namely himself, he worries, having just learned about Alex’s leg when he arrived at the inn. 

Michael paused, half bent over to pick up a GI Joe doll that is currently dressed in Madeline Hatter’s costume from Ever After High and realizes Joe really doesn’t have the legs for it, but to each his own. Tucking it into the antique cedar chest in the corner of the main room of the house that serves as a toy box for both Jamie and the other kids that visited, he gestured for Alex to follow him into the kitchen.

“All of what, Alex? I mean, I assume you understand what a B&B is,” he said, pausing at the counter, knowing he’s being an ass but he kind of wanted to hear Alex say it. “Coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, and you know that isn’t what I meant. I mean. Come on, Michael. You. Here. All of it.”

Turning to the massive glittering brass monstrosity that had been his last choice for the place, and his partner’s absolute obsession, Michael easily moved about setting it up to brew. Dipping the scoops in the fresh ground coffee, tapping it off and then tamping it down before affixing each to the machine and flipping the switch as he placed cups beneath it. 

“Alex, obviously you know or you wouldn’t be here. I mean, you don’t seriously expect me to believe that somehow you just happened to stumble into this place on accident? Who gave us up?” Leaning back against the counter, he folded his arms over his chest but he doesn’t give Alex a time to answer. “Let me guess. Isobel?”

“She didn’t give you up,” Alex argued, leaning a bit heavily on his crutch as he stared at Michael, positively at a loss for what to say or even how to go about this.

It’s not like he couldn’t say this life wasn’t good for Michael. He looked happy with his curls combed through and drawn back into a twist at the nap of his neck. Alex never would have thought about him dressed in what seemed to be yoga pants and a soft sweater he knew from a fact was silk. It was a look that was softer and more sophisticated than he would have expected for Michael and yet it suited him. 

He looked at home surrounded by the class furniture pieces and New England nicknacks. Coming in he’d seen pictures of Michael picking pumpkins, and backlit by a sunset at a clambake. In all of them he’s smiling, making a face at the person behind the camera, enjoying his life.

Alex can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. 

“Seriously, she didn’t give you up. It’s more like someone else mentioned you and I asked how you were, and she told me about this place.”

“And that’s all she told you?” Michael rolled his eyes at his sister, already thinking about just what he’s going to say to her when he calls her later. 

“She said you were living in Vermont and gave me an address. She didn’t mention you run this place or… any of it.”

“Actually we own it,” he said, turning to work on turning their coffee into lattes, moving with an easy grace as if he did this all the time. Alex figured he probably did, making drinks for their guests. From everything he’d read on his flight they were doing pretty well with the bed and breakfast. “We also run it but the place is ours. I agreed to figure out how to be an innkeeper so long as my name was on the property. I never wanted to end up homeless again.”

It’s that dichotomy that is part of why this all feels surreal to Alex. The Michael he had known was just a kid living out of the back of his truck. A kid that had taken a beating for Alex and he’d last seen thrown out of the shed. 

Now he looks sleek and happy, with his frame filled out and his expensive clothes right down to the boat shoes he has on, peeking out from beneath the hem of his boot cut yoga pants. 

It’s in that moment that it hit Alex what else was off. His gaze dropped to Michael’s hand as he mixed up their drinks. He still bore scars from the hammer that had destroyed his hand but Alex is certain he’s had work done on it. 

He’d heard that Michael hadn’t gone to the doctor from Maria, that he’d been around town with his hand mangled for nearly two years before he packed up his truck and left. 

Now though it’s twisted still but he’s using it, and some of the scars were smoother, neater, made by a surgeon and not a beating.

“You have a child together though, do you really think that is a fear? I mean…” Again he gestured around them but not nearly as wildly. “I… You…”

“Alex, come on,” he says, picking up both stoneware mugs and moving past Alex for the French doors leading out to the deck. “Let’s sit down, talk it all out and catch up. Okay?” He paused, looking back at Alex with a shy smile and a soft gaze as he looked him over, unable to stop his gaze from lingering on his right leg. 

Alex sighed, moving to take one of the mugs from Michael and opening the door for him. “I take it she told you?”

“We get the Daily Record delivered. You made the front page,’ he pointed out, moving to the handmade table situated on one corner of the massive deck. Most of it he had built himself, a place for him and his family to enjoy the day, for their guests to relax. “Is there anything I can get you? I do have a fairly well stocked medicine cabinet.”

Alex snorted at that, settling in across from Michael and staring at him as Alex cradles the mug between his hands. There’s a million things he wants to say, to tell him. How sorry he is. How much he wishes things had gone differently. How he wishes he’d been a better man. 

Except he’s looking at Michael sitting there as a small smile curved his lips, looking out over a beautiful backyard that was edged in old growth trees. They were closer to Montreal than they were to the Atlantic Ocean. He had left Roswell, and left behind Jesse Manes and the bar fights and the pain and the homelessness and he’d found happiness. Alex just isn’t sure how.

“Tell me about the boy.”

His pictures line the hallways of the house, his toys neatly stacked in the corner. If Michael living this life is hard to believe, that he has a son is absolutely insane..

“His name’s Jamie. I don’t think we ever intended to have a child. I mean, when someone was here with a kid we might joke about it, but never seriously. Then one night we got a call from Liz. A classmate of hers was pregnant and having a hard time and she needed a safe place for the child where his father wouldn’t ever find him. Next thing I know, we’re flying back to Roswell and bringing him home. I fell in love with him on the plane ride back,” he admitted, laughing as he shakes his head. “He just laid his head on my shoulder and I was a goner.”

“Why’d she need to get him away from his dad?”

“Same old sad case. He was abusive, had gotten her pregnant to trap her into marriage. He, uhmm… He killed her about two weeks after Jamie was born.”

“You don’t think he’ll ever come for him?”

Michael was quiet a while, considering Alex. Alex realized what that look was. He was trying to decide just how much he could trust him. 

“Nevermind. You don’t have to tell me.”

“You know I will now, right?” He almost smiles, but it’s tight and sad considering what they’re talking about. “His birth certificate lists his mother as Liz. She helped the mother deliver the baby in hiding and then they drove to the hospital and Liz told them she had given birth. Arturo and others supported the story and … Now here we are. We told him his mother was gone, and Liz signed over custody to us so I could adopt him. I offered to leave things as they were, with them on the birth certificate but I’m glad we did this. He’s our son, and I’m glad he knows that.”

It’s a brilliant way of doing it, and it makes Alex realize how much of his friends’ lives he’d missed. Liz was more than just a scientist, and Max was a cop. Isobel was the social queen of Roswell and had even arranged his parade. And Michael was host and homemaker at a bed and breakfast in Vermont. It’s like… like…

“You realize your life is a Hallmark movie, right?”

Michael laughed then, the light returned to his eyes, his smile full and wide and open. “I can’t argue that. It’s definitely something,” he said, setting down his mug and turning the gold band he wore on his right hand. 

“Okay, I have to ask. How? How did this even happen? How are you with… and here and…” Words are not coming to Alex, and he wished he could make sense of all of it. People changed, sure, but this just felt like a sitcom.

“The truth? It started out as a game of gay chicken one night at the Wild Pony. I was drunk, he was wasted. I mocked him by flirting with him and, well, he flirted back. We ended up in the storeroom making out until Maria through us out. I figured he’d sober up and regret every minute of it.”

“Except?”

“Except it happened another night, then it became a game. How far would he go? How much would he let me do in public. I don’t even remember moving in, just suddenly I was there every night. Then he got offered a job up here. Basically the small town doctor you see in movies. That’s when he pitched the bed and breakfast at me. He wanted me to know I would have a job, a place for myself, and not just his trophy wife,” he laughed, shaking his head.

Alex shifted, leaning forward as he leaned his arms on the table, staring at Michael like he had lost his mind.

“You’re telling me that the boy that bullied me for four years… And just like that? You moved? You’ve been with Kyle Valenti for years now, married to him, and it’s all a game of gay chicken?” Disbelief tinged his tones, knowing that Michael has to know it’s more than that. They have a home. A child. Michael is wearing a ring, for God’s sake. 

He’s grinning though, sipping his coffee and giving Alex a nod. “Yep, like that.” He paused and then the smile grew softer, more fond. 

“Well, no. Not just like that. It meant leaving a lot of people important to me behind, but I mean, how was I supposed to win if I turned him down? He took my hesitation another way. That’s the night he proposed. We got married at the courthouse the next week. It’ll be five years next month.” He all but sighed as he settled back in his seat, offering Alex a besotted smile that said so much more than his words did. “I couldn’t let him think I was chicken, right?”


End file.
